It's all just a matter of perspective…

Tag Archives: grounded

Airplanes fly through some crazy stuff. They go up and over thunderstorms, they easily survive temperature gradients from over 40° C to well below -70° C; some can even dodge missiles, or fly nearly into outer space. However, just this week, a British Airways flight from Heathrow to Dubai was forced to abort mission for what is perhaps the silliest reason of all time.

Was it birds on the runway? Nope.

Was it ice on the wings? Nope.

Was it, god forbid, a terrorist threat? Nope.

What grounded this flight was a passenger. Not an unruly passenger, no. It was a passenger with a severe problem – a severe toilet problem. A fellow passenger later tweeted that the flight was aborted due to a “smelly poo in the toilet.”

“Blimey, I know airplane food is bad but this is ridiculous…”

To quote the pilot, who ordered the plane to return to Heathrow, the reason for the returned flight was a ‘pungent odour’ coming from one of the plane’s bathrooms, emitting from what he, quite colourfully describe to be “liquid fecal excrement.”

Apparently the crew had “examined” the problem, and were “unable to fix it,” leading some to speculate that this particular poo was not limited to the boundaries of the toilet bowl… if you catch my poo drift.

While this passenger, who remains nameless (though certainly not without nickname), has checked one more item off of their (poo) bucket list, I now need to devise a more nefarious plan for getting one of my own flights grounded via bodily fluid.